The Roomba Robotic Lawn Mower

Rejoice! Roomba Is Building A Robotic Lawn Mower To Trim Your Grass For You

Ever since my mother got a Roomba a decade ago, vacuuming was never the same. The adorable little suction robot would prowl the house, doing the work for you. Now, Roomba is developing a potentially even more revolutionary gadget: the Roomba robotic lawn mower.

According to Reuters, iRobot Corp, the makers of Roomba, have received clearance from the FCC to develop an automatic mower that would be guided by stakes, which send off signals to the mower. Basically before they were prevented from doing so because of FCC regulations on setting up radio beacons outdoors (you can't just set up your own radio antenna,) but the logic here is that if they make the signal weak enough and the beacons (the garden stakes) weak enough and it shouldn't interfere with anything.

Now, other manufacturers like Husqvarna, John Deere, Bosch and Robomow build robotic mowers (which mostly run over $2,000) but iRobot Corp (which, by-the-by, sounds exactly like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, but I digress) believes it will have a simpler technology.

It could be big news. The downsides of a Roomba are that to make the thing work best you have to be clearing some furniture out of the way and saving your poor robotic friend from getting stuck or bouncing around the same wall corner for five minutes. But a lawn, with its wide open spaces, should negate that problem. Plus, if we can get any more gifs like this internet classic, that has to be a good thing right?